Charles Sturt University (CSU) lecturer in animation Damian Candusso is celebrating Oscar success for Australian director George Miller’s animated feature film Happy Feet. Damian, who is based at the CSU Wagga Wagga Campus, was already in Los Angeles for the 2007 Motion Picture Sound Editors’ (MPSE) annual Golden Reel Awards ceremony, which was held on Saturday 24 February. Happy Feet was nominated for Best Sound Editing at those awards, but lost to the animated movie Cars. However, last night Happy Feet went one better to pick up the Oscar for the Best Animated Feature Film at the 2007 Academy Awards. Speaking from Los Angeles Damian, who worked as a sound editor on the animated penguin flick said, “We’re all very excited,” adding , ”The sound award would have been awesome but the Academy Award is a higher honour”.

Academics and other professional staff at Charles Sturt University (CSU) are being introduced to the next wave of online change. Associate Professor Marian Tulloch, the Director of the Centre for Enhanced Learning and Teaching (CELT), will introduce the new online learning and teaching environment CSU Interact at a series of seminars on CSU’s campuses between 7 May and 16 May. “In early 2008 CSU Interact the new online collaborative scholarly environment will be rolled out across the University for learning and teaching,” Professor Tulloch said. “As part of CSU’s flexible learning strategy it will provide an integrated, enhanced and evolving learning environment for on and off campus students. Because it is a complex and collaborative process, these seminars will provide an opportunity for staff to hear more about the development of CSU Interact, to ask questions, and make suggestions.”

The problem of child sex tourism will be discussed at a workshop at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Albury on Monday 12 February. “The purpose of the workshop is to achieve some consensus on what Australia is doing to respond to this problem in the Asia-Pacific region, and how strategies and responses can be better focused and improved”, said CSU lecturer in tourism and workshop convenor Dr Sallie Yea. Invited speakers include representatives from the Australian Federal Police, AusAID, Australian Institute of Criminology, University of Technology Sydney, ChildWise, and CSU. The workshop will be held in the Administration Building boardroom at the CSU Thurgoona Campus in Albury between 9.30 am - 4.30 pm. The morning sessions of the workshop will be open to CSU staff and the general public, at a cost of $20 to cover catering, but places are limited. For more information please contact Dr Sallie Yea, Lecturer in the School of Business and Information Technology, on 0419 530 058 or (02) 6051 9921.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) students will soon return to the Campus towns of Albury, Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, Orange and Bathurst, and some will be seeking off campus accommodation, according to CSU Student Services Officer Jane Battersby. “We have VTAC and UAC rounds coming out next week, so the student demand will soon be there. We have a database of off-campus accommodation providers, from vacant rental to shared rental and board.” Colleen Poy says providing accommodation to CSU students can be very rewarding. “I started off with one house, then two and now I have five houses. I really missed my children when they left home. There’s nothing like being around young people, they never lose their enthusiasm. Every morning is a whole new day and they are up and at it. I think it’s wonderful.”

Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) Allied Health Clinic in Albury is seeking patients who need foot care for its final year podiatry students. Podiatry is the investigation and treatment of foot disorders, and  CSU offers the only four year podiatry degree available in Australia outside metropolitan cities. “We welcome anyone with any type of foot problem,” said Associate Professor Paul Tinley, Head of Podiatry. “We can assess and treat most foot problems and make referrals where necessary. There is a thirty dollar consultation fee, and qualified podiatrists supervise the students as part of their training.” Prospective patients can phone 6051 6922 to make an appointment at the Allied Health Clinic which is centrally located on the corner of Guinea and Olive Streets in Albury’s CBD.

Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) National Radio News (NRN) was Highly Commended in the ‘Excellence in the Spoken Word’ category by the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) at its annual conference in November 2006. NRN manager, Mr Peter Hetherington, said “The highly commended award is a well deserved result for the whole NRN team which consists of only three full-time journalists and six casual cadets who are CSU communications students.” Mr Hetherington said this was the first time in several years NRN has entered in any awards. “It lifted the morale of the staff to be competing on a national level, with the standard of the NRN entries very high. It also showcased the ability of cadet staff to a broader audience, and demonstrates the unique news experience NRN offers to students who are selected for cadetships.”

After six months teaching Year Seven students in a small American curriculum school, Charles Sturt University graduate Lijana Poga decided to switch to volunteer work in an impoverished area south of Manilla in the Philippines. There she found herself working with kindergarten students and developmentally delayed orphans in an unusual classroom setting – a rubbish dump. She was living with an Australian family who run a mission organisation which provides food and schooling to 1 000 children. “I started sponsoring a girl while I was at school and always wanted to volunteer. I decided to go to university and study Education so I had something to offer.” Lijana has returned to Dubbo where she will be teaching in the city’s West. “I’d just like to tell other Education students that there are so many opportunities out there from teaching from international schools to volunteer work. It’s definitely worth looking into.”

Former US vice-president Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, which details the affects of global warming, has become the third-highest grossing documentary in the United States to date. It seems the film’s message is not lost on Australian audiences either, according to Dr Mark Morrison from Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) School of Marketing and Management, Bathurst Campus. He is working on a CSIRO project looking at the value the community has for reducing global warming.”We are measuring the community’s willingness to sacrifice future income to mitigate the affects of global warming. It is very interesting - we are finding that although about ten per cent of people don’t want to sacrifice any income, there is a very large proportion who don‘t care about the cost, they just want it fixed.” He says the preliminary findings were presented at a conference in New Delhi recently.

Tennis lovers rejoiced yesterday when the Australian Open got underway in Melbourne. The Open marks the beginning of the tournament year for tennis players, so for the past eight weeks, they have been concentrating on reaching peak fitness, according to Dr Rob Duffield, lecturer in the School of Human Movement at Charles Sturt University (CSU). Once the frenetic pace of the tournament year gets underway, “It becomes quite difficult to find time for physical conditioning, so a lot of tennis coaches and tennis players do their fitness work on court using practice drills. The problem with these drills is that you don’t really know what’s going on,” said Dr Duffield, who spent part of last year quantifying the physical responses to popular tennis drills. His results will be published soon, and will be beneficial to tennis coaches. “Coaches can say well, this kind of drill is very aerobic and will improve physical fitness, while that kind of drill will increase shot velocity and shot accuracy,” he said.